


across the sea of space, the stars are other suns

by peterstank



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, IronDad & SpideySon, Pepperony - Freeform, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, morguna is my queen, nebula is a blue meanie, tony misses his small arachnid boi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-01 18:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19182961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterstank/pseuds/peterstank
Summary: {to confine our attentions to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit}He holds the kid in his arms again, for the first time ever really. His heart has never been so steady. He’s never felt so at peace. Tony glances at the sky, stares at the infinity, the cosmos, the stretches and swirls of colour and light, and thanks whatever sun saw fit to put a star back together and send it down to earth.or: 3 times Tony missed Peter + the 1 time he didn’t have to





	across the sea of space, the stars are other suns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [viviixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/viviixen/gifts).



> *clears throat* yo so I know we’ve never even spoken but I just spent the last two days reading your Hydra!Peter fic and I couldn’t even formulate thoughts to leave a review because I was so blown away by your amazing writing, so I thought hey! I’ll express my gratitude via a whole ass fic lmao  
> (but seriously, your writing is fantastic, you made my day, i love your story, here’s some free angst)  
> Also y’all if you haven’t read it yet, it’s called “Let’s Make Our Own World” and it’s fucking FIRE so go check it out :D

_“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.”_

_\- Carl Segan_

 

* * *

 

It’s sort of like those abstract paintings Pepper had collected for him; a nonsensical spread of colour, multitude and depth unimaginable, acrylic plastered across the canvas in a way that’s too bright, too blinding. It’s hard to look at for too long. If you look once you get sucked in. There’s a meaning to it, a system behind the chaos.

 

“You’re staring again.”

 

Tony tears his eyes away from the windows and sits back like a dog sinking onto its haunches, bones hollow, joints protesting. He’s never been so aware of his age, so aware of the fact that he’s  _ageing._ There’s a cap on his life, an expectant expiration; one day it’ll all end and lately, he’s been feeling like that end might be coming up fast.

 

“Yeah well,” he picks up the wrench again and grips it tightly, the metal cool against his palm. “To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit, or whatever.”

 

Nebula stares. “Wise words coming from a Terran.”

 

He chews on the idea of confessing the words aren’t his, they’re someone else’s. He wonders if she would have any fraction of an idea about who Stephen Hawking is, and then wonders why it would matter. So he says, “Yeah.”

 

Nebula is practical and mechanical in her motions. Everything is practised, fixed. There’s always a goal in mind, she’s always doing something. Fixing things, sharpening her knife in long strokes, planning his demise (probably).

 

Now she taps the metal ring of the fuel inlet, a clear message:  _keep working._ Neither of them are big talkers. Their interactions thus far, over the course of the last two weeks, have been short and terse.  There’s a strange understanding between them; they’re built of the same parts, have the same bitter in their veins, and carry the same objective in their hearts.

 

Tony hunches over and gets back to work, throwing the visor down over his face as she reignites the torch. It’s been three hours. They’ve dissembled the preburner. Nebula is welding metals together with no regard for the safety precautions ingrained into Tony. She doesn’t wear a mask or gloves, and no matter what, the work doesn’t seem to hurt her or tire her out.

 

He envies that most of all.

 

The ship—Milano, Tony had garnered it was named—isn’t like any vessel he’s ever seen. The engine runs through the body like blood in veins. It’s a clunky, stubborn hunk of titanium that won’t give them an edge no matter how much they fiddle with it, no matter how big the sea of nuts and bolts grows around them.

 

It’s quiet work now. The quiet means his mind runs on overdrive, the lack of sleep leaves him in a heavy daze, and suddenly he’s not on a spaceship drifting lightyears from Earth.

 

He’s back in his lab. He’s with the kid. He can smell motor oil and coffee and he hears it,  _god_ , like he’s  _in it_ ; the kid’s laugh. It rings out through the room, encompasses the whole space. Eyes crinkled at the corners, a happy smile, sunshine in a place the sun doesn’t belong.

 

“Stark?”

 

( _Mr. Stark? I don’t feel so good... Mr. Stark—_ )

 

Nebula is watching him, black eyes trained on his face. Her features are alien, but he can still see the heart of her. She may think it’s all locked up tight and safe, but it’s right there on her shoulder. He can see it.

 

“Yeah, I’m good, Blue’s Clues,” he mutters, realising he’s hunched over, gripping his knees, gasping.

 

Nebula reaches out toward him and jerks back just as quickly, the touch contemplated and disregarded.

 

He pretends he doesn’t see it.

 

“We should move on to the thrust regulators,” Tony says.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Warm hands around his wrist, a scratchy blanket abrading his skin, the sunlight so bright it blinds. Tony blinks once, twice, three times before it settles: where he is, what happened, just how much he’s lost.

 

It’s like the Accords all over again. The pain that he’d believed was buried so deep, the wound he’d thought was scabbed over, is gaping and raw once more. He’d seen Steve and his first instinct was to reach for him, delirious and starved and dying, and Steve had held him up.

 

But then he’d remembered how he’d also torn Tony down, apart, kicked his legs out from under him and turned his back all for his fucking Bucky—James Barnes who murdered Tony’s parents, Steve who’d known that, who’d lied to him, who’d chosen a murderer over Tony.

 

All it had taken was one image to send Tony falling over the edge, reeling, spiralling out of control, on fire like an asteroid about to impact the surface of the earth.  _Peter Parker: 15 - Status: deceased._

 

They’d lost.  _He’d_  lost. Over and over and _over_ again. He got, he built; materials in his hands putting pieces together to assemble something like structure, stability, home; impact, betrayal, bullets—take take _take_ , until there’s nothing left, until his hands are covered in dust and his heart is screaming and his throat is bleeding and his lungs are on fire.

 

( _I don’t wanna go, Mr. Stark, please—_ )

 

Hands, reaching toward him, grasping for him, desperate, a voice thick with fear, eyes wide with sheer terror and staring at something Tony couldn’t see.

 

“Tony?”

 

It’s just Pepper, though. Just Pepper now, with her hands on him. Warm hands, a diamond ring, placed there the day he’d decided he was proud of the kid and maybe, just maybe, he could join their little throng of misfits—

 

(because the kid was young, and he had stars in his eyes that were echoes to Tony; he talked fast and moved his hands a lot and fidgeted awkwardly and his heart was Au, 79, 196.966 570(4) and he’d never betray Tony, would he? Tony could trust him, count on him; even if the squirt made a few mistakes here and there, he was dependable, solid, Tony had been leaning on him more than he’d ever realised because he’d wanted...

 

 _needed_ to be better than Howard)

 

“Tony, can you hear me?”

 

Tony squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again, even though it hurts. Everything hurts. He feels like his skin is made of paper, like the marrow was drained from his bones. He’s hollow, brittle, grey. 

 

“Pep.”

 

Pepper smiles, a beam of sunshine, painted cosmos colours, distant planetary stars. “Yeah,” she says,  _sobs_. “Are you okay?”

 

Tony can only nod. His left arm is cold from the IV fluids being dumped into his bloodstream, replenishing what he’d lost after 22 days in space with a homicidal blueberry.

 

“I’m good,” he says, even though his heart is in pieces, sucked into the chasm of his stomach. But he has her, his one last tether to the light, and he thinks

 

(hopes)

 

that’s enough to keep the rest of him from falling.

 

 

* * *

 

“It  _itches._ ”

 

Tony nods, refusing to get absorbed in the sea of big brown eyes and rosy flushed cheeks, lips downturned into a pout. “I know it does, but we’ve been over this, haven’t we, little miss?”

 

Morgan moans, annoyed, and folds her arms over her chest. She’s three years old and already has more attitude than all the kids on Toddlers in Tiaras combined. “ _No_.”

 

“ _Yes_ ,”  he argues. “If you scratch, you’ll bleed.”

 

She’s _already_ bleeding , her knee stained with crimson. Tony applies the hydrogen peroxide, smears the Neosporin on the wound, and plasters a band-aid over the world’s most dramatic spider bite of all time.

 

_No_ , his mind whispers.  _Second most dramatic._

 

“Why are spiders so _mean?_ ”

 

“Hmm?”

 

He pretends to be distracted, wiping excess ointment off her leg and his hands. Morgan crawls right into his lap and gets up in his face. “I  _said_ , why are spiders so mean?”

 

“Who says they’re mean?”

 

His head feels heavy, like it might actually fall off of his neck. His hands are sweating. He doesn’t want to have this conversation, doesn’t want to venture down this road.

 

“It _bit_ me.”

 

“Maybe,” Tony starts, haltingly, “it was afraid you’d squash it.”

 

“I would! I’ll squish _all_ the spiders! They’re meanies and they bite!”

 

Tony closes his eyes and rests his forehead against her own, and she doesn’t understand why, doesn’t know that his throat is closing up and his eyes are burning. “Not all spiders are mean,” he whispers. Morgan is weighed down by the gravity in his voice. She curls into him, doesn’t say anything when the tear falls from his cheek to hers. “Some are good, okay? Some just wanna help.”

 

Morgan puts her hand right over the arc reactor scar. She’s always done that, felt for his heartbeat. “I guess... their webs are pretty.”

 

Tony nods. He’ll never be able to explain to her why he can be rendered limp, shredded apart by the simplest things. “Really pretty,” he agrees. “Just like you.”

 

Morgan smiles, a breath of starstuff, she’s nitrogen and carbon and calcium and iron, and ten times over she’s got him beat in the IQ department, he just knows it. She glows brighter than any piece of the cosmos he ever saw with his own two eyes.

 

“It’s okay, Daddy,” she whispers, hands on his cheeks, understanding something she can’t comprehend.

 

Tony kisses her forehead. Maybe it is. “Thanks, halfpint,” he whispers. “Go find Mommy, okay?”

 

Morgan smiles and runs off, spider-bite and all. Tony is left alone to stare at his shaking hands, cleared of the ashes, and wonder if there’s still starstuff on his skin from the other kid he lost, the one who crumbled apart against him, shaking and scared and sorry, and left a hole in his heart.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A year later,

 

He holds the kid in his arms again, for the first time ever really. His heart has never been so steady. He’s never felt so at peace. Tony glances at the sky, stares at the infinity, the cosmos, the stretches and swirls of colour and light, and thanks whatever sun saw fit to put a star back together and send it down to earth. 

 

He kisses Peter’s cheek. 

 

(this is nice)

 

Everything is going to be okay. 

 


End file.
